The atypicality of semi-presidentialism in the post-Soviet countries: the context of the votes of no confidence in governments

Abstract

The variations of presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential systems of government represent the main framework of analysis of this study. Extremely different factors of the political process and inter-institutional relations, which are the conditions for defining different systems of government, can be indicators for distinguishing typical and atypical systems of government. In this sense, the purpose of this article is to determine whether the peculiarities of the institution of the vote of no confidence in governments in several post-Soviet semi-presidential countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia) can predetermine the atypicality of these systems of government. It is argued that the atypicality of the post-Soviet semi-presidentialism is often due to the fact that parliaments have the right to cast the votes of no confidence in governments, but the latter come in force only when they are supported by presidents, who may be empowered to choose between the dismissal of governments and the dissolution of legislatures. On one hand, such systems of government definitively tend to be semi-presidential. On the other hand, the atypical responsibility of governments to parliaments denies the semi-presidential nature of systems of governments largely in favor of presidentialism. This determines that against the backdrop of traditional generalizations of different systems of government, they are formally and actually constructed as "constitutional hybrids" in six post-Soviet countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia) and therefore can be positioned both as cases of atypical semi-presidentialism and instances of incomplete presidentialism. At the same time, such cases are unique and must be classified as exceptional ones.